THE CRICKET MATCH
others, some of whom were big men yet looked like children beside the massive, huge-boned, heavy- jointed figure of the black. The hush of wonder fell upon the spectators as their eyes followed this prodigy. Among the clear, fresh faces about him, his savage, sable features contrasted with appalling oddity; among the bare heads, with hair flashing in the sunshine, his heavy-boned African skull, the dome of which was covered with close, kinky, lusterless wool, seemed of a bizarre and forbidding brutality. When presently, in answer to some friendly greeting, he smiled with a startling flash of white teeth, and the great, flat-featured face lighted with unmistakable good humor, the spectators experienced a sense of relief, then laughed with him, and upon the instant he had become the favorite.
The game began, and Virginia, though utterly ignorant of the meaning of each play, found no difficulty in following its fortunes from the exclamations of those about her.
From the very start it was painfully evident that the Gentlemen were outclassed, yet so plucky were their efforts and so cheerful their demeanor in the face of a rapidly progressing defeat, that their friends watched in growing sadness but not in disappointment, while the visitors, who appeared, as Virginia's companion said, to have "collared the bowling," piled up the runs rapidly.
Before long Virginia ceased to ask the score; the details were too harrowing. The Gentlemen played well, but ineffectively. Virginia found a quality of pathos in their cheerful persistence, but even more pathetic to her was the quick eagerness with which the spectators welcomed each plucky effort, no matter how
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